


won't look down (won't open my eyes)

by lionheartedgirl



Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: (written after 6x10), Caroline-centric, F/M, Gen, and caroline dealing with her mom's death, au for season six, from her view/dealing with her grief, more friends then lovers, slight caroline/enzo, sometimes she doesn't have so nice thought/feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-14
Updated: 2017-04-14
Packaged: 2018-10-19 00:20:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10628244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lionheartedgirl/pseuds/lionheartedgirl
Summary: She likes the bluntness and the sex and the alcohol and how it all reminds her of sophomore year in high school. Before she knew that vampires existed. Before she knew anything of the supernatural.When she had two living (estranged) parents, always there when she screwed up.





	

Caroline’s mother dies in her hospital room, still holding her daughter’s hand.

The doctors tell her, remind her, of how painless it was. That with all the drugs and what they had done to make Liz comfortable, it was just like falling asleep. Her mother probably didn’t even know what was happening.

(The doctors and nurses talk and talk like they know anything at all.)

Liz’s hand had gone limp in Caroline’s hand hours before she had died.

Elena and Stefan find her there. Take turns holding her, letting her sob into their shoulders, as Damon stands somewhere over their shoulders staring at her mother’s dead body.

Elizabeth Forbes dies, the last words she whispered (hours before) was that she loved her daughter.

(She had done this endless times before only to fall asleep and wake up again.)

 

\--

 

Caroline does everything she’s supposed to.

She cries and she cries; alone and with someone else to hold her hand.

Holds it together just long enough to make it through the funeral arrangements and picking out everything her mother had told her she wanted and Caroline had tried not to listen to.

She makes it through the funeral, the eulogy, and everything that comes after.

(Her mother is not buried next to her father, though nearby, still in the Forbes plot.)

Eventually she goes back to her classes, she studies and does her work, finds herself crying at movies her mother used to watch when she’s flipping through the channels.

Caroline Forbes is everything a grieving daughter is supposed to be. She does not turn off her humanity, the switch stays on, and she does not contemplate otherwise. She goes through the human emotions made worse by her vampire nature and she never tries to stop it.

Her mother would never want that.

She goes to the graveyard every Sunday morning, leaving flowers.

 

\--

 

Stefan finds her fucking one of her TA’s in one of the janitor closets when she had said she had been going to the library.

Her dress was pushed up to her waist and her underwear lying on the ground and the man was still inside of her.

Some part of her wants to laugh.

Her TA scurries away at the look in Stefan’s eyes.

Caroline rolls her eyes and picks up her underwear.

They were expensive.

 

\--

 

She watches _The Notebook_ with Elena in their dorm room and they both cry as they hold hands and eat popcorn.

She color codes her notes every night before she goes to sleep, just to keep them in order. Just to make sure they stay that way.

She looks through Alaric’s books for something to bring Bonnie back to them. Book after useless book.

She orders the flowers for her mother’s grave over the phone. Sunflowers, yellow, bright, and strong.

 

\--

 

Caroline goes to the Alpha-Beta—

(Zappa-Kata? Alpha-Zeta?)

Caroline goes to a fraternity party alone, with the sole purpose of getting drunk and finding a guy who was hot enough to hook up with for the night.

It’s not hard.

She drinks and she drinks and she doesn’t think of her dead mother once, the one that would tell her how underage drinking was illegal and wrong.

Caroline finds her target for the night within minutes of getting there. Flashes him a shy smile as she brushes her hair behind her ear. All innocent freshman like. He meets her at the keg and she giggles at his jokes like their actually funny and eventually he leads her upstairs to his bedroom.

She lets him pretend that he’s the one in control until they get there, then Caroline crawls into his lap, sucks his lip into her mouth and breaks the skin just enough for there to be blood.

She doesn’t drink, she never drinks, but she smiles at him with blood stained lips and that little innocent freshman is gone.

(She never existed you see. She died before she ever came to Whitmore.)

 

\--

 

She wears her perfectly picked outfit to her psych class and she raises her hand with the correct answer six times.

She gets coffee with Elena and Matt joins them, awkwardly trying to fit in, as he tries to find out how she’s doing and not mention her mother.

She talks to her English teacher after class and asks about books she’s already read and if they would help with her understanding of class.

She lays orchids on her mother’s grave Sunday morning.

 

\--

 

She fucks her way through the Zeta-Beta-Capa-whatever house until she has a reputation and the boys she doesn’t choose start chasing after her.

Caroline laughs and flips her hair.

(High school really doesn’t end, does it?)

 

\--

 

“This isn’t you.” Stefan says and Caroline laughs.

He starts in about her compassion and how she always does the right thing and how loving she is and how she can put her mother’s death behind her without forgetting her.

And it’s all very sweet in some twisted way.

The way he looks at her like she might just be perfect.

The way he describes her and leaves out all those pesky parts that people don’t think it’s polite to mention.

She laughs as he rants on.

“Caroline…”

“Sorry, I just…This _is_ me, Stefan. This isn’t grief, this is just me. How I’ve always been.” She says stepping closer, “See in that nice speech you gave, you left out how I like attention, crave it really, and how I seek approval in all the wrong places. Mostly guys. Mostly sex. Ask Elena if you want—sophomore year of high school was me working my way though half the football team.”

“After your parents divorced.” He says like he’s psychoanalyzing her, slowly figuring out what’s wrong with her. Just minus the couch and fee.

“Yep.” She pops the word, and nods sarcastically, “See, Stefan, that’s what broke me—and it happened before you got here, so you know, no big deal, no need to save me or feel guilty.”

She pushes passed him and he doesn’t stop her.

 

\--

 

She sleeps in her mother’s bed. (It’s musty in the room and she’ll have to dust later, but the pillows still smell like her, like her mom, and there’s still a gun under the pillow and there’s something comforting about that.)

She seeks out Ric, trying to get help on the whole Bonnie thing.

She skips her psych class and meets with the TA in private instead at the library.

She leaves roses at her mother’s grave.

 

\--

 

She finds Enzo at the Grill and something about him being there makes her laugh. He hears her coming long before she slides into the seat beside him.

“Hello, gorgeous,” He says not looking at her, but he’s still smirking anyways.

He’s always smirking.

“Give me whatever he’s drinking.” She tells the bartender and then turns to look at him.

She tilts her head as she watches him, looking him over, until he finally breaks.

“Something you wanted, Caroline?” He asks, “You know all you have to do is—”

“Want to piss Stefan off?” She asks.

She likes the bluntness of it, the way it rolls off her tongue.

She likes the bluntness and the sex and the alcohol and how it all reminds her of sophomore year in high school. Before she knew that vampires existed. Before she knew anything of the supernatural. When she had two living (estranged) parents, always there when she screwed up.

And God, did she screw up. Over and over again.

(They still disappeared when the lectures were over, but whatever.)

“You have my attention.” Enzo says and she smiles and flips her hair.

 

\--

 

She puts a rubber band on the door and pushes Enzo down on her bed and doesn’t need to be gentle about it.

Caroline smiles at that.

“This doesn’t mean that I’m interested in you.” She breathes into his ear, hovering over him, him pushing inside of her and her doing her best to keep him there.

“Never thought it did,” He breathes.

_“Good.”_

 

\--

 

She fucks him two more times until there both too sweaty and too hot, and her sheets have both their blood on them. (It’s not as good as human blood, but there’s something about his blood in her mouth that makes her moan.)

When he leaves the room, he’s still wiping at the closed wound on his neck and Elena is in the hall sitting across from them, going over her own notes.

When she enters the room, Caroline is already in her sweats and tearing off the sheets on her bed.

“Did what I think just happened, actually happen?” Elena asks.

“Don’t know,” Caroline shrugs as she shoves the sheets into her laundry basket, lifting it up, ready to head for the laundry room downstairs. “What do you think happened?”

 

\--

 

She takes notes as her psych professor talks about displacement of feelings, of focusing the attention and feelings of one thing onto something or someone else.

She highlights something in her book.

She gets coffee at the vending machine and talks to Jo about blood bags at the hospital.

She flips through book after book, repeating Bonnie’s name in her head.

She leaves violets at her mother’s grave.


End file.
